


ten fingers and ten toes

by theexistentialqueer



Category: Old Kingdom - Garth Nix
Genre: Childbirth, F/M, again no beta, i'm too impatient for a beta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-26
Updated: 2018-09-26
Packaged: 2019-07-17 18:26:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16101266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theexistentialqueer/pseuds/theexistentialqueer
Summary: Sabriel gives birth to Ellimere, as Touchstone watches on.





	ten fingers and ten toes

The birthing bed is far more horrifying than Touchstone had ever imagined.

It's not the blood, or the smell, or the frantic movements of the midwives, rushing back and forth with cool towels, ewers of water, empty bowls. It's not the prospect of the gore, the way a woman's body must rend itself to bring a child into the world.

It's Sabriel's screams that disturb him.

For as long as he's known her, Touchstone has known Sabriel as quiet. Quiescent. Self-assured and authoritative at times, insecure and shaking at others, but always quietly. As if the silence of Death had seeped into her very being. But now, Sabriel cries out in pain, and Touchstone shudders. The only other time he's heard her cry out that way had been when Kerrigor--Rogir--Rogirek--had stabbed her. Hearing those screams again rends something inside of him.

If he could take some of that pain away from her, he would, in less than half of a heartbeat.

Her hand in his, sweaty and grasping, and she tightens her grip as much as her depleted strength allows. Truthfully, it allows quite a lot; she's far stronger than her slight frame hints. Touchstone's joints crack, but he ignores the pain and grips her hand in return as well as he can. Another one of her screams rips through the air.

Childbirth in the Old Kingdom follows certain customs. There are midwives--one, normally, for a common family, but four to wait on Sabriel, as the Abhorsen and also as the recently crowned Queen. The laboring mother mounts a sort of stool, with smoothly carved wrests for the rear and the knees, and a little well-oiled slide of sorts for the expulsion of the child. Sabriel had spent many weeks studying the child-bearing customs of the Old Kingdom and of Ancelstiere to determine which would be best for the delivery of their babe. In Ancelstierre, women lie prone upon their backs, using the strength of their muscles and the babies' own will to get to open air to birth the child. This only being the second birthing Touchstone has seen in his life, the Ancelstierran custom seemed strange to him.

"I trust in gravity more than anything," Sabriel had said when she made her decision, the wry hint of amusement in her expression brushing away her terror. She hadn't bothered to explain what that meant.

The midwives' bustle reaches a frantic pace, and Touchstone lunges from one to the other, seeking something he can do, anything he can do to distract him from the awful sound of Sabriel's cries of pain and labor. They brush him aside. He may be King, but in this room, the midwives rule.

Suddenly, after some signal he misses, they cluster around Sabriel, patting cool damp cloths against her forehead, holding her shoulders back, pressing on the rounded moon of her belly, murmuring gentle encouragement and praise. Sabriel opens her clenched eyes long enough to meet Touchestone's, and she gives him a small smirk of pride. _I'm doing very well, all things considered_ , he hears, her imagined voice in his head. He lunges forward to squeeze her hand again.

A shrill cry pierces the air, a cry that is not Sabriel's. There's blood everywhere. The midwife between Sabriel's legs pulls the baby forward and does something with a knife, and the cord between Sabriel and the baby falls free. Touchstone wavers between fussing over Sabriel and fussing over the baby. Given that three of the four midwives are now clustered around the baby, he settles for fussing over Sabriel, although every cry from the baby makes him shudder and twinge.

"You're amazing," he tells Sabriel. "You're so brave. You're beautiful."

"Oh, shut up," Sabriel says, rolling back her eyes. Dark hair lies sweat-plastered against her forehead, and her pale skin is covered in drops of salty persperation. "I don't feel either."

Touchstone smiles ruefully.

"Do you remember the bet we made?" he asks.

Sabriel, shuddering with the recoil of pain, rolls her eyes again and thinks. "About the baby's name," she says.

"Yes," Touchstone says, massaging her hand, his thumbs running firm, gentle circles into her palm. "If it was a boy, we'd go with my name. If it was a girl, we'd go with yours."

Sabriel rolls her eyes up to look at him and smirks. "I told you it was a girl."

"You can't be sure!" Touchstone protests. Secretly, he almost wants her to be right. He wants someone to dote over and dress up and give presents too. He knows others would say it's unmanly, but that's what he wants. 

"I'm surer than you, but anyway we have to wait for the midwives to be done. They do seem to enjoy their drama," she adds in a whisper.

Touchstone rubs at her hand, feeling the joints and kinks in it. There are certain knots familiar from holding a sword, and others familiar from holding a bell. Sabriel has both, and he only knows the latter because of her. He's learned the difference between a knot from her sword and a knot from her bells; he can even, at times, tell the knots from her bells from one another, based on the bells she's favored. There are the common knots, from Saraneth and Kibeth, but he's come across knots from Dyrim too, and Ranna, and even Mosrael. Her work requires much of her and Touchstone tries as hard as he might to give it all back in turn.

The midwives are clustered around a tub, their actions hidden from view by the bulk of their bodies, but Touchstone expects they are scrubbing the baby clean. The baby still cries, loud, hearty yells, and every sound makes something dance in Touchstone's heart. He wants the midwives to be done; he wants to meet his child. He massages Sabriel's hands between his and wonders how long it takes the midwives to do their jobs.

Until finally one turns, hands clasped properly at her breast, and looks to the King and Queen. "Your Majesties," she says, her voice a proclamation that is taking entirely too long to reach its end, "I am pleased to announce to the both of you, that through the labors of love and birthing........"

_Get on with it already,_ Touchstone thinks. _You mummers._  

"...........the Kingdom has a royal Princess. You have a baby girl. What name shall we give her?"

Sabriel gives a bark of laughter that alarms the midwives. Touchstone knows she's laughing because she won their bet. He knows the baby's name, as much as Sabriel does. They'd spent nights in their bed, the covers pulled high over their heads, whispering names back and forth. Sabriel had cried on one occasion, when she'd told him what she wanted. About a girl with bones like a sparrow, and pale skin and pale hair, a graceful thing powerful with the Charter. How Sabriel had crawled over her body and held it and had not been able to cry.

The name Touchstone had wanted to give a girl was Alysanne, the name of his mother's eldest daughter, Touchstone's favorite sister. He couldn't begrudge Sabriel her own choice.

Sabriel, drenched in sweat, her hair plastered in dark lank heaps against her forehead, takes a breath, and then another, still shuddering from the after-effects of pain. She lifts herself up off the bench slightly, and looks at the midwife, and says, "We name her Ellimere."

A page, wide-eyed with horror at witnessing the birthing spectacle, perched against the west wall, peels away in the edge of Touchstone's vision, no doubt to hail the ringing of the bells. Touchstone doesn't care. He just wants to see his daughter, and if the midwives keep dredging up stupid ceremony after stupid ceremony to keep her between him and his wife, he'll have a fit. But just as he's thinking this, the chief midwife turns around and shifts something with her arms, and when she turns back round again, she has a bundle cradled against her chest.

A small bundle, wrapped in a blanket, pale and dark-haired, with the hair forming into small curls. Eyes closed, no crying now, just the very almost silent sound of breath fizzing in and out. Touchstone has been held in death before, but it's an entirely different experience to feel his heart stop momentarily in his chest.

He's in love with Sabriel. He knows the feeling of sinking into eternity, like it feels to sink into the Charter--that's how his passion for her feels. He looks at the tiny bundle in the midwife's arms, and feels himself sinking again--not the same as with Sabriel, of course, but that sinking is there. Something that pulls him down and doesn't care about his will, and he doesn't care about his will, because the sinking is _everything_. You can fall in love with more than one person, he realizes, in more than the same way. You can fall in love with your wife and fall in love with your daughter, and it doesn't mean the same thing in either case, except that it means love.

The midwife approaches Touchstone with the infant--with Ellimere--in her arms, and Touchstone readies to hold her. Then he remembers himself and draws back. There are others, nobles, in his kingdom who would argue that it is the King's right to hold his child first, that the royal blood holds superior to all others.

Touchstone holds Sabriel above that. Without her, he wouldn't be here. Without her, he wouldn't have a _reason_  for being here.

He motions the midwife to Sabriel instead.

Sabriel takes Ellimere into her arms, the gesture awkward by lack of practice. When Ellimere fusses, Sabriel adjusts her grip, until steadily it's right and the baby is quiescent.

A midwife approaches at Sabriel's side, bowing. "Perhaps Your Majesty would prefer to move from the bench to the bed?"

Sabriel and Touchstone both look down and realize Sabriel is still perched over that strange birthing stool, her muscles dancing with exhaustion. She moves, with the midwife's help, and settles gratefully into the royal bed with Ellimere curled against her breast.

The midwives busy themselves with cleaning up the mess of birth. Sabriel, reclining in bed with the infant Ellimere curled up on her chest, opens one eye and looks at Touchstone. He's been ensnared by the spell of love cast by watching both of them, making him feel content and drowsy. Sabriel's look wakes him up.

She lifts a hand and crooks one finger towards him. "Come here," she says.

He obliges his orders and approaches the bed, and then stops, awaiting more commands.

Sabriel pats the bed space next to her as gently as she can without disturbing Ellimere and says, "Lay down next to me."

Touchstone lays down next to her. Beside her now, he finds himself trembling, not knowing what she wants, what the baby needs.

Sabriel reaches out and clings to his hands. "I need you here," she says, not clarifying what _here_  means, although Touchstone thinks he might know. I need to--to--Touchstone, will you hold her?"

He's wanted nothing, asked for nothing, begged for nothing in his entire life as much as he's needed this: to reach his hands out, gently, gently, one supporting the baby's head and the other curled around the baby's back, precisely one-third of the posterior and two-thirds of the bottom, protecting all of the baby's vulnerable points. This baby who, only a half-hour old, could be sacrificed to destroy one of the Great Charter Stones. The thought sends Touchstone into shudders.

But the baby is so warm. He looks at her closely. Ten fingers, ten toes. Hair curling slightly on her head, not a sign of anything in particular, because many babies with curly hair grow up to have straight hair. Still, Touchstone hopes the baby will have curly hair. That Ellimere will have curly hair. It's so hard to think of the baby as Ellimere. If she's just "the baby," maybe Touchstone could hide her away from everything and protect her. If she's Ellimere, she'll have to grow into a responsibility Touchstone doesn't want to force upon anyone else.

Ellimere.

 


End file.
